Mrs. Puff

Mrs. Poppy Puff is one of the main characters in the SpongeBob SquarePants franchise. She is SpongeBob's teacher at Boating School, where she teaches students how to drive boats similarly to underwater cars. She is an elderly, paranoid pufferfish who wears a sailor uniform. She is voiced by Mary Jo Catlett. Teaching and driving are her passions in life, and she is talented at both, having taught every student other than SpongeBob how to drive. She and SpongeBob are always on an "endless quest" to get him a driver's license, but due to his reckless boating skills, they never succeed. Her boating school is the only one in the ocean and is very popular. Her schoolhouse is recognizable for being attached to a submerged lighthouse and surrounded by an stunt-driving course. Mrs. Puff was the last main character that Stephen Hillenburg added to the cast of the series. When he pitched SpongeBob to Nickelodeon in 1997, the network gave him an order: they would only produce the show if SpongeBob was a kid who went to school, like "Arnold from Hey Arnold! under the sea." Hillenburg was prepared to "walk out" on Nickelodeon, as writing SpongeBob as a school-age child went against his creative vision. However, he came up with Mrs. Puff and her Boating School as a compromise, allowing SpongeBob to attend school as an adult. Mrs. Puff was one of his three favorite characters, along with SpongeBob SquarePants and Pearl Krabs.